said the joker to the thief
by Scarlet Secret
Summary: Rosamund has a solution to all their problems. It's just taken her a while to make it work! AU/Crack - some spoilers.


A/N: Crack. Holy crack Batman, levels of crack.

* * *

The Vera Bates model had died after three weeks and Rosamund had scuffed her brand new pair of purple suede mules when she kicked the mucky wall in Poplar in frustration.

She had been _so_ sure that the mechanics were suitable and she'd spent _months_ getting them precisely right but after two weeks she'd snuck to the bad part of London, her companion complaining all the way about having to wear what amounted to a balaclava to cover her face, and seen the jaundiced skin and half-vacant expression of the model as she'd ambled down the street and known that she had failed. The uncontrollable model had bumped first into the lamppost and then almost fallen over the milkman as he tried to help her, only to end up spilling the contents of her shopping basket all over the floor before they observed it falling asleep in the washing up through the widow of the house much to their mutual disgust.

It had certainly not been promising and though she had been inclined to somehow engineer the model's disappearance so she could use it for spare parts Vera – the very_ real _Vera whose raging, indignant eyes Rosamund could see very well through the slits in the rather ludicrous headgear she was wearing that made her look rather like one of the young men who had lost the better part of his face in the war – had objected strongly. Apparently it would have been _too bleedin' strange_ to see parts of herself lying around the house and she didn't truth her lady not to keep the _pleasant_ bits and just take away her mouth and so Rosamund had conceded and left her sad creation to die its own death.

When the news came that Vera Bates had died of arsenic poisoning she had sent an anonymous wreath and scoured her great-grandfather's notebooks looking for anything to indicate what she had done wrong. In the midst of her research, though she hadn't discovered a satisfactory explanation for the disorientation, she had also found absolutely nothing to suggest that a misfiring model should die in the way it had.

_"I just don't understand it!"_

_"It must have been John." Vera had said, idly sipping her tea as she scoured the newspapers at the breakfast table, making a small list in the margin of books she wanted fetching from the library._

_"But the poison can't kill her! Either everything I have ever read is wrong or… oh dear lord…"_

_The lightbulb went on and she chastised herself for ever having been so foolish. On the other side of the table Vera didn't look up but her pen stopped scratching against the paper and a small ink stain began to form suggesting to Rosamund that her lover's attention was elsewhere._

_"What?"_

_"The police think her food was poisoned and she died of extended consumption, possibly administered by another it said in the paper-"_

_She ignored Vera preening – even for being dead Vera was overly-pleased to have appeared in the paper._

_"So?"_

_"So you and I know that wasn't true."_

_"So what if we do?"_

_Rosamund rolled her eyes and wondered at herself for being so fond of a petulant child. Admittedly she was a petulant child with gloriously soft skin who would spend hours putting her skilled fingers and tongue to the test but Rosamund felt obliged to nudge her foot under the table to make her behave. Vera nudged her back and she soon found herself with a stockinged calf pressed against hers - unfortunately for Vera, she was not to be distracted at the moment._

_"Vera, if she didn't kill herself and being a machine I can think of no reason why she would have suicidal intentions, and Bates didn't kill her-"_

_"He might have! In the paper-"_

_"But the signs were nothing to do with poison! She was malfunctioning and even if he'd given her poison it would have had no effect and left her system within a day."_

_"So?"_

_"So there's only one explanation for why she had poison in her system on the day the body was found."_

_"What?"_

_"It was you, wasn't it?"_

Vera had offered no reply but evasion, however, the glee with which she had observed the subsequent trial, daringly sitting in the viewing gallery like a morbidly dressed raven, swaddled in a variety of disguises, had quite convinced Rosamund.

Oh well, she had thought later on, all things considered she had never really cared for Bates anyway.

* * *

It took Rosamund a further two years to iron out the flaws in the design. She could have done it quicker of course but the occasion of Mary and Matthew's wedding, followed swiftly by Edith's had meant that Rosamund had needed to be out of the country. If she was in England then she'd have no choice but to come – in France or Switzerland she could send a hamper and claim she was too ill to travel, which was precisely what she had done, all the while ignoring the incensed letters she received from mama and Robert.

The two years had passed quickly. Vera's presence, as she had known it would when she'd made the decision to create a duplicate of her lover, had slowed down progress considerably even if it had made the wasted time _enormously _enjoyable. For what need was there of her work when they were sat in a terrible, glorious, sweaty bar in the middle of the continent drinking local spirits until they could scarcely see before falling into their bed to sleep in the haze of raki, cigarettes and sex? They had been caught up in their own cleverness and so happy that Vera had scarcely reacted when she'd found out about her erstwhile husband being released. (Rosamund had loved her for that and told her so for the first time.)

Vera had contemplated sending him a photograph just to scare him but Rosamund had vetoed it and taken them to Italy instead. They'd settled, set up in a lovely set of apartments overlooking the Arno and after three months of actually being able to do her work, Rosamund had hit upon the solution to the problems with the earlier model. How she managed to resist the delights of Italy she didn't know but somehow she had been content tinkering in her little laboratory, coming out only for meals and Vera.

For her part Vera had had been pleased to leave her to it, only too happy to loll around the house looking after her mad lover. It seemed ridiculous now that she'd spent half her life trying to look after a man who'd wanted a wife he could put on a pedestal in the same way she saw the Italians bowing before the Holy Mother in the ornate and fabulous alters, only to find herself working for a woman who didn't really want a maid so much as someone who would fulfill all the duties of wife. She cooked every day, learning the language and befriending locals as she went, picking up recipes and tips here and there and thoroughly enjoying the life they were creating. It was simple in its way and so much better than anything she had ever known before.

Vera mastered gnocchi at about the same time Rosamund burst out of her lab hair askew, looking quite like something out of a novel with mad eyes and a sense of dangerous triumph about her and announced:

_"She's alive!"_

Vera had poked her head around the door of the lab for the first time while Rosamund slept where she had collapsed on the chaise, looking rather childish as she dozed under her lab coat and a throw Vera had pulled over her. Suffice to say, Vera was not amused by the base model Rosamund had used this time.

* * *

_Dear Miss O'Brien,_

_I don't know if you recall, it being so long ago now, but we corresponded several years ago and I thought it was time that I renewed that acquaintance as myself and my employer-_here the ink was smudged and Sarah furrowed her brow-_have a proposition for you. I should probably begin by informing you that I'm not in fact dead-_

The rest of the letter might as well have been in Chinese for all that Sarah absorbed it after the extraordinary pronouncement at the top of the letter she had received on a chilly Wednesday morning to tell her, rather casually, that Vera Bates was not dead. She had _seen_ the police take Mr Bates away for the murder, had given evidence at the trial, had _heard_ him talk about his final confrontation with his wife, and in her heart of hearts, even though he was now free, she had never been entirely convinced that he was innocent. Oh, she'd had no desire to see him hang and from what she'd known of Vera Bates the mental mare had probably deserved it, but there had been little doubt in her mind that he had been the one to shove her off this mortal coil.

Apparently she had been mistaken.

She excused herself from the breakfast table, pretending that she had heard Cora's bell when in fact no such sound had rung. She relied on the gullibility of the rest of the staff to believe that she somehow had a sixth sense as to when Cora would require her presence and as it turned out she wasn't entirely incorrect because when she was halfway up the service stairs to the ground floor she heard a bell sound and go uncommented upon which probably meant that it was her ladyship's. As she ascended the stairs she stared at the letter in her hand, turning it over and over again as though she was going to find some secret watermark somewhere that would alert her to who had sent her something that was clearly a joke.

Outside Cora's door she stopped and read through the letter again, becoming even more baffled by the frankly insane suggestions within it.

_Lady Rosamund's especially good at robotics – no really – and she wonders if you and her ladyship might benefit from the work. There was an incident-_

Whatever the incident was she didn't learn then because the door swung open and his lordship stormed past.

"For goodness sake O'Brien!"

She jumped aside and he rampaged down the corridor and out of her sight. Things were still strained, that much she knew without being told, but her ladyship _had_ told her about the ongoing coldness. He slept in the same bed but never touched her and really all they shared that amount to anything anymore was their children. And Sarah heard the silent _two who don't need me and two gone_ each time Cora spoke and it hurt her heart.

Slipping inside she found Cora crying and shoved her letter into her pocket, immediately focussing her mind to something more pressing.

"Oh m'lady…"

She was at the side of the bed in moments and had Cora's head on her shoulder in seconds. Their intimacies had become steadily greater and Sarah didn't hesitate to stroke Cora's hair soothingly, shushing her quietly until the current bout of tears had subsided.

"Are you al-?"

"Of course I'm not!" Cora snapped and immediately looked as though she regretted it, smiling ruefully as she wiped her eyes with the handkerchief Sarah had already handed to her. "Things are terrible of course. But I shouldn't take it out on you should I?"

Sarah smiled softly and leaned in, pressing her lips to Cora's in the gentlest possible manner. Cora was yet to turn her away and Sarah supposed her lady saw it as a kind of cold comfort, but that was better than nothing. It had been a _long_ year, sorrow heaping itself upon sorrow until Sarah had thought her lady was going to break and the only thing she'd been able to think to do was hold her together. Cora had assumed she was offering more – Sarah, technically, had been, but she had never dreamed Cora would get the message – and Cora kissed her softly and often these days.

"I wish I could make things easier for you m'lady."

"I know," Cora sighed gently and couldn't quite bring herself to let go of Sarah's hand. She smiled wryly and slumped back against the mountain of pillows. "If only there was a magical solution to all our problems."

Sarah raised her eyebrow and reached into her pocket, handing the letter cautiously to Cora as though the author would somehow snap her lady's hand off somehow.

"I think you should see this…"

* * *

_Two months later…_

"Oh darling," Rosamund preened across the veranda as her sister-in-law appeared for breakfast. "Robert says you're becoming quite yourself again."

Cora raised her eyebrow curiously, a smile threatening to break forth as she pressed her hand to Sarah's shoulder in an all-too-brief-for-both-their-liking display of affection. The sun shone brightly in Venice and on their private rooftop Cora rather enjoyed being able to swan around in her silk dressing gown for as long as she liked without having any kind of obligations; her companions demanded nothing of her but her presence and she felt very little guilt as she was technically still fulfilling her duties as a wife to an Earl. Violet would prefer her answering back less anyway so all in all it had been a wonderful solution.

"I beg your pardon?"

"He says you seem to be coming out of the rut O'Brien leaving left you in-"

"I still think you should have made a model of Sarah. I don't like the thought of even a robotic me without her own O'Brien."

Vera rolled her eyes at the nauseating little speech and the way the pair looked at one another. She had never been a fan of seeing others in love and watching these two preen as Sarah poured tea for Cora and the Countess smoothed down the silk of the dressing gown she had brought for her lover the moment they were somewhere Sarah could actually _wear _such an item, she felt the stirring of irritation that she usually did. Surreptitiously she glanced at Rosamund next to her, but the stupid woman was still reading through her letter and Vera couldn't help but be annoyed by how much more content she seemed since Cora had arrived.

"I'm sure she'll survive. Apparently her new maid is much less trouble and he's thoroughly pleased to have finally got rid of... well, he uses a string of adjectives that I don't think you'll want to hear."

Sarah snorted inelegantly at the comment and sipped her tea, caring not one jot for the opinion of Robert bloody Crawley, especially now that he was so far away. They were out of his house at long last and she didn't remember ever being quite so content in her whole life; Cora was _hers_ and she was determined to make the most of it rather than be defeated by memories and ghosts.

"What will we do when I want to go back?"

Sarah tensed in her seat and around the table she felt a similar ripple from Vera and Rosamund. It had taken so much to get them here, thought and preparation and weeks of having belongings sent to Eaton Square for them to collect during their separate flits and now Sarah saw the horrible possibility that this was nothing more than a brief holiday for Cora looming on the horizon.

"Go back?" Vera managed to choke out eventually, purely because of the three she would be the least devastated by the Countess' departure. Since the other two had arrived she had discovered, unsurprisingly, that she rather liked Sarah O'Brien and had taken to her rather well, but the Countess of Grantham was quite another story. She was altogether too sweet for Vera's taste, vainer than Rosamund - a feat Vera had thought impossible - dependent upon her adoring maid and had already learnt more Italian in the time she had been here than Vera had managed in years. Rosamund and Sarah were bloody useless and she had liked being the one to commune with the locals, but that had been spoiled. Still, she would rather Cora was _here_ being annoying than have to endure the other two being miserable with her away and she wouldn't wish the company of Johnny and Rosamund's idiot brother on anyone.

"For goodness sake calm down all of you," Cora smiled airily and shook her head elegantly at their faces and Vera knew then and there that the Countess, who she had thought a little bit dim and silly, never spoke without knowing _precisely_ what she was saying. Vera couldn't decide whether it made her like Cora more or less. "I only meant that I would quite like to see my children and grandchildren."

"Oh, that's the easiest thing in the world darling," Rosamund smiled widely, her momentary concern forgotten. "Whenever I visit we'll swap you over and store her in the attic."

"And what about us?" Vera asked tartly, nodding towards Sarah.

"Don't worry darling," Rosamund smiled at her in the way that made her forget how annoying she found lovers and under the table she felt Rosamund's foot on her calf. "You two can go to Eaton Square. It's more or less closed up so you'll have the run of it."

"Oh joy," Sarah muttered for Cora's benefit as she sipped her tea.

Under the table Cora took her hand and the conversation turned to the more pleasant consideration of what they would be doing that day.

* * *

To be continued because obviously XP


End file.
